


break its earth open

by Chrome



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminal Minds Setting, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternative Universe - FBI, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Case Fic, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, FBI Agent Christophe Giacometti, FBI Agent Katsuki Yuuri, FBI Agent Phichit Chulanont, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mystery, Mystery/Thriller, Skater Victor Nikiforov, Thriller, basically everyone but Victor works for the FBI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-08 22:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14703876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Special Agent Yuuri Katsuki has only been with the BAU for a month, but he's already haunted by their latest case: a serial killer targeting professional athletes. When his childhood idol, world-famous figure skater Viktor Nikiforov, is abducted in the wake of a competition, Yuuri knows it will take everything he has to find him before it's too late.(or, Yuuri is an FBI agent, Viktor is still a figure skater, and the clock is ticking.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a "draw two" game, my prompts were "mystery/thriller" and "hurt/comfort." This fic owes everything to the fact I've been watching Criminal Minds for almost a decade.
> 
> The fic is complete and beta-ed and I'm just making tiny adjustments, so new chapters should go up every day or so.
> 
> Huge thanks to the ever-wonderful [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor), who was the first reader/sufferer of all of this and came up with the title, to [Rakel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar) for her amazing beta read of the fic, and to [Roa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cROAissant) who did a very early read of this first chapter!

It was pushing past one in the afternoon when the call came in. “We’ve got another one,” Celestino called, “Briefing room in five.”

“Right on schedule,” said Phichit, and stood up. “Yuuri?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said, and set his phone down. Phichit gave him a look—Yuuri knew he’d been picking it up and checking for texts all morning, a nervous and deeply unnecessary habit, considering the phone would chime if he did get any messages. “Coming.”

Phichit shook his head. “I can’t believe this is your first month and we’ve got one like this. It’s normally not this bad.”

“Can I get that in writing?” Yuuri joked. He tried to ignore the twisting in his stomach.

Phichit laughed and led the way to the briefing room. As they approached, Yuuri could see through the glass that Isabella was already seated. Sara was there, too, standing at the computer console. A glance backward confirmed that Emil was trailing them, and Christophe was shuffling through something at his desk but standing up. Phichit headed in, but before Yuuri could, Celestino caught his shoulder.

“Katsuki,” he said.

“Yes?” Yuuri asked. “What is it?” His anxiety immediately presented him with seventeen options, ranging from ‘your tie is tied incorrectly’ to ‘you’re a disaster and I’m firing you.’

“If you need to sit this one out, say so,” he said.

“I’ll—” But Celestino was already striding into the room. “Okay?”

He followed Celestino inside, Emil right behind him by now. Phichit shot him a quizzical look from his rapidly-becoming-customary seat across the table. Yuuri shook his head—he didn’t know either. He might have been new to the BAU, but he’d known Phichit much longer. They’d been college roommates, and had joined the FBI at the same time. Phichit had been with the unit since the previous year, and Yuuri strongly suspected he’d played a not-insignificant role in getting Yuuri the job.

As Christophe entered, Celestino nodded at Sara, and she began bringing files up on the screen.

“Alright,” Celestino said. “It’s been three days since the last body, so the Unsub is keeping to their schedule. We have another victim.”

Sara spoke up as she pulled up the file. “Viktor Nikiforov is twenty-seven and a professional figure skater.”

She would have kept talking if Yuuri’s audible gasp hadn’t distracted everyone else in the room.

“What is it?” Isabella asked. Yuuri realized that all the other agents were looking at him, Phichit with a growing concern, the rest with confusion.

“I—I know him, I mean, I’ve heard of him. I wanted to be a figure skater when I was a kid,” Yuuri said in a rush, with a glance at Phichit. “I had posters of him in my room when I was younger.” The last admission slipped out without his consent.

“Well,” Celestino said, looking at Yuuri seriously. Their conversation at the door suddenly made complete and horrible sense. “Are you going to be okay on this one?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said, instantly. “Yes.”

“Alright then,” Celestino said. He had the tendency to take his agent’s decisions at face value, which Yuuri appreciated most of the time and was irrevocably grateful for now. There was a moment of silence as they all looked at each other. Phichit reached under the table to put a hand on Yuuri’s knee. It wasn’t subtle—the table was a little too wide for Phichit to not look ridiculous doing it—but Yuuri appreciated it all the same. 

After a moment, Sara continued. “The abduction occurred in a hotel in Colorado. Like the other abductions, it occurred in an elevator, shortly following a sporting event—in this case, Skate America. There’s security footage, but the perpetrator has his face covered. There is also blood that the lab in Colorado is running right now.”

“Is it the Unsub’s?”

“We have reason to believe it is,” Celestino said. “The hotel sent us the footage from the elevator.”

Sara pulled up the security footage and played it. It was grainy, but mostly recognizable. It must have been a modern hotel--the video was in color, blurriness aside. A man stood in the elevator. Viktor, unmistakably, his hair silver even in the dull light, skates in one hand and cell phone in the other. He was texting one-handed. When the door opened and the Unsub entered, Yuuri watched a familiar scene play out. He’d watched four other abductions just like this, the only difference the victim, the exact angle of the camera and the brand of blandness of the elevator.

It didn’t make watching this one any easier. Yuuri forced himself to focus on the details, anything that could end up mattering. He watched the elevator door shut, trying not to look too hard at Viktor’s face.

The Unsub was tall and broad-shouldered. He wore a sweatshirt, hooded, and kept his face away from the cameras. It was easy to see the moment Viktor’s smile vanished and the interaction turned violent: the man seized him and knocked the phone out of his hand. He tried to put Viktor into a headlock and Viktor struggled, twisting in his grip. For a moment it seemed the man had won as Viktor stopped struggling.

Then Yuuri watched him snap the blade cover off a skate and slash it across the man’s face. Even in the video he could see the spray of blood: across the blade of the skate, in an arc on the elevator wall. It seemed to work for a split second when the man released him and staggered back, but the elevator wasn’t about to open and the Unsub intercepted Viktor’s attempt to dive for the emergency call. He threw the skater easily back against the wall and hit him once, twice. Yuuri couldn’t hold back a wince as Viktor slumped to the floor, and the man lifted him like a rag doll to drag him out of the elevator. There was a momentary blur of color—the famous silver of Viktor’s hair, the red that the skate had sprayed across the interior, the flash of gold—and then the security footage was quiet, an empty elevator, an abandoned cell phone and a pair of bloody skates.

“And that’s it,” Sara said. “I’m running through the footage from the rest of the hotel now, but nothing yet. Either he did a good job avoiding the cameras or he changed his appearance somehow.”

“Or both,” said Christophe.

“Why aren’t we on our way to Colorado?” Yuuri asked, even though he knew why. Their Unsub liked to jump states. The baseball player from Chicago, found in Louisiana. The tennis star from Michigan in North Dakota. Their recent return from Maine while the victim was shipped home to Indiana.

Celestino looked around the room. “Emil and Isabella will go to Colorado. Go to the crime scene, to the lab, talk to everyone. They’ve already sent us footage but see if there’s more.”

“The rest of us?” Phichit asked.

“Stay here,” Celestino said. “Work the profile. Wait for the call. I need you ready to go once we think we might know where the secondary location is.”

Yuuri nodded. Nodded again. Would have kept nodding if Phichit hadn’t poked him in the knee. Instead he folded his hands in his lap.

“Dismissed,” Celestino said. “Wheels up in ten,” he warned Emil and Isabella, who were already standing up to get their things.

Yuuri stood up shakily and headed for the bathroom. Phichit followed. He knew Yuuri well enough not to say anything, just trailed him in and stood with his back to the door, standing guard. Yuuri went to the sink and splashed water on his face, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Yuuri, not looking at Phichit. “I just want to work the case.”

“Okay,” said Phichit. “I’m here, okay?”

“Okay,” said Yuuri.

They’d been back at Quantico for only a day, hauling themselves home from Maine after the triathlete had been found strung up in a tree. The method of death was never consistent and seemed to have no rhyme or reason to it, a fact which had bothered Yuuri since he’d first read the files. The soccer player had been beaten to death, the baseball player strangled. The triathlete had been cut open, his entrails hanging out the gaping wound in his stomach. His mind easily supplied him with the facts and the crime scene images, committed involuntarily to memory.

Yuuri rarely had nightmares. Even before he’d joined the BAU, he’d seen some gruesome cases, but he wouldn't have lasted long if he let every corpse haunt him. Even so, he knew without a doubt that he’d dream of Viktor Nikiforov that night, dripping in his own blood, his blue eyes dull and glassy and empty.

He splashed more water on his face. “Twenty-four hours before the man calls, probably,” Yuuri said. “That’s a lot of time for the profile.” It wasn’t, but sometimes Yuuri needed to lie to himself to make it through the day.

Back to the whiteboard. Some of the black writing had been up there so long that it had hardened on—there was whiteboard cleaner in a drawer, somewhere, that Yuuri would have to dig out and wipe off if they wanted to make any changes, or if they ever managed to solve this case.

Five people dead. Six people kidnapped. According to the pattern, they had four days or they’d have another body, then another three days until he killed again. The facts went around and around in his head as he and Phichit returned to the bullpen, joining Christophe at the center.

“A trucker,” Christophe suggested, perching on the edge of his desk. “He’s covering huge distances without flagging anything.”

“They usually have specific routes, though,” said Phichit. “He’s all over the place.”

Yuuri dragged the other whiteboard over. “Time,” he said. “Kidnapping. Usually it’s twenty-four hours before he calls, but sometimes up to thirty-eight. He gets them out of the hotel and brings them to—somewhere else.” He drew a long line across the board and split it into four roughly-even segments, marking out the kidnapping. The first phone call.

“Then he gets them somewhere else,” Phichit said. “A third location, usually across the country, sometime in the next two days. And they’re alive for it, we’ve never found a victim who was dead more than a day.”

“And they must make the second phone call from there,” Yuuri said. “The one the victim makes. It’s only the day before, they can’t cover that much ground in that time.”

“And he needs the time to commit the murder and stage the scene,” Phichit said. “He must feel like he has time.”

“They’re restrained,” Christophe said. “They must be. Tox screen keeps coming back negative, so he doesn’t drug them.”

“Or whatever it is, it’s out of their system really fast,” Phichit suggested.

“They didn’t sound drugged on the calls,” Yuuri said.

“They sounded hysterical and afraid,” Christophe disagreed. “Hard to tell.”

“He can’t get them on a plane,” Yuuri said. “So he has to be driving, somehow. Chicago to Louisiana is a long way.”

“Fourteen hours of driving,” Phichit said. “Yeah, doable. I want to know where he’s keeping them once he gets there, though! That’s a lot to plan in advance. He does this on a schedule, he’s got to have resources of some kind…”

“Texas to Maine, that’s a long way.”

“Warehouses,” Christophe said. “If he’s a trucker…”

“He’s not a trucker!” said Phichit.

“Why Louisiana?” Yuuri said.

“Why Chicago? Why a baseball player?” Phichit countered. “Why a baseball player from out of town?”

“Because of the hotels, if they’re—“ Yuuri broke off, and then shook his head. “I thought for a second, maybe an employee, some sort of loyalty card holder, but they’re all different hotels. Different chains.”

“Sara,” Phichit said, and then hit the call button, waiting until she picked up. “Sara! It’s me!”

“I’m across the office, you could come visit,” she teased.

“You need your computer, we need a whiteboard!” Phichit chirped. “Can you check and see if there’s any connection between the hotels? Same owner, same...I don’t know, loyalty card?”

“I’ll check,” she said. “Anything else?”

“That’s it,” he said.

“Thanks, Sara,” said Yuuri. She hung up.

Phichit watched Yuuri fidget. “What are you thinking?”

“I need to know why Louisiana,” said Yuuri. “Because we have his blood, and I think he’s going to have a record. I think we’ll know who he is before we get the phone call.”

“So…”

“So we need to know where he’s going,” said Yuuri. “If we’re going to find Viktor, we have to be able to get there in time.”

Christophe looked at Yuuri. “This is really messing you up, isn’t it?”

Yuuri shook his head. “No, I—why do you say that?”

“The way you say his name,” Christophe said. “The way you looked in the briefing room when Sara pulled his picture up. You keep playing with your good luck charm and you ran to the bathroom immediately after the briefing.”

“It’s nothing.”

“If my childhood celebrity crush was kidnapped by a serial killer, I’d be thrown too,” Christophe said, not unkindly. “It’s understandable.”

“It’s not like I—cried, or threw up or—can we just focus?” Yuuri asked. He could feel his face started to grow warm, his eyes starting to sting. He didn’t have the emotional energy to argue with Chris about his mental state, which was probably a bad sign.

“Okay,” Christophe said. “But keep a clear head.”

“I am,” Yuuri said. “Never clearer.” He wasn’t lying.

“Yuuri’s right, though,” said Phichit. “Screw who the Unsub is, if we can figure out where he’s going, we can catch him anyway. Even better if the lab does our work for us.”

Christophe nodded. “So back to the beginning. The baseball player was first.”

“The local PD had that one,” Phichit said. “Missing persons, thought maybe he’d gone on a drunken bender. Then they got the phone call.”

“He knew who was investigating it,” Yuuri said. “But that was jurisdictional, it doesn’t mean much.”

“He could have googled it,” Phichit agreed. “They didn’t call us in until the body turned up in Louisiana.”

“In the middle of nowhere,” said Christophe.

“He wanted it found,” Yuuri said. “It wasn’t about keeping out of sight.”

“Of course he wanted it found,” Christophe said. “He stapled the poor man to a billboard.”

Yuuri flinched. Phichit rested a hand on his shoulder and Christophe gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

“It’s—fine. You’re right. He wants the bodies found. So why the different locations?”

“Makes him hard to catch,” Phichit said. “A practical serial killer?”

“Maybe,” Yuuri said. “But how does he pick? That’s a long way to drive to consider practical.”

“He could throw a pin at a map,” Phichit said.

“He’s too methodical,” Yuuri said. “We said—a white man, thirties or early forties, someone who’s just out of his prime and resents it. A narcissist, which explains the displays. He’s arrogant. He thinks he’s smarter than us and he doesn’t think he’ll be caught. But he’s also methodical. It’s the same pattern, the same time frame. It’s only the locations we can’t predict. There’s got to be a commonality.”

“I want to know about the shit he has them read,” Phichit said. “It has to mean something.”

“It doesn’t always,” Christophe said. “He’s a lunatic of some kind. Maybe delusional, maybe not, but it doesn’t mean there’s a purpose to the poems.”

“Or maybe he thinks there is,” said Yuuri. “But it doesn’t make sense to anyone but him.”

They broke off the conversation when Celestino entered the bullpen. “What is it?” Yuuri asked.

“Colorado got a match on the DNA,” Celestino said. Sara was right behind him.

“I’m emailing you everything we have on him,” she said. “He was incarcerated for two years on drug charges.”

“That’s it?” Yuuri said. He wasn’t sure what he’d pictured, but it wasn’t that. Assault and battery. Past murder. Something violent.

“Yes,” Sara said.

“Where’s he now?” Phichit asked.

“No idea,” Sara said. “He broke his parole about—three months ago, and we don’t have anything on him since.”

“Fuck,” said Christophe. “There goes that.”

“Crispino,” Celestino said. “Everything you can get on this man, we need it.”

“You got it,” she said. “And no connection on the hotels, guys, I’m sorry.”

“It was a long shot,” said Yuuri. “Send us those files.”

The day dragged on. The text on the files blurred in front of Yuuri’s eyes. If anyone noticed, he would have blamed the hours of screen-reading, or the dry heat of Virginia autumn, but he knew it was the sting of tears creeping in when he thought too hard. He guessed his teammates noticed—at the very least, Phichit at the desk across from him with his constant guarded glances in Yuuri’s direction—but they had the courtesy not to say anything.

The clock ticked to 6 PM, then 7. Celestino appeared at Yuuri’s shoulder, startling him out of another reread of the dull police report about a stupid unremarkable man. “Go home, Katsuki.”

Yuuri shook his head. “Just a little longer.”

“Go home,” he repeated. “We’re going to get a call tomorrow and I need you present for it. Mentally, not just physically. There’s nothing that exhausting yourself here is going to do. Go home.”

So Yuuri went home. His evening routine turned into a mechanical completion of a blur of ordinary little tasks. Take off shoes. Feed the dog. Take a shower and try not to imagine blood running down the drain.

He made rice and ate it with leftover chicken from a plastic container in the fridge, not tasting it at all. When he got into bed, the dog followed, as though she knew something was wrong. He buried his face in her fur and fell asleep, drained from the events of the day.

In his dream, he was walking along the beach in the town where he’d grown up, skates in his hand. Back from the Ice Castle, he thought in the back of his mind. He could hear the waves and above them, the cry of the seagulls.

Somehow he knew that the figure standing alone at the edge of the water would be Viktor Nikiforov even before he reached him, and the man turned to face him. “Yuuri!”

“Hi,” Yuuri said, because even in a dream he couldn’t think of anything more interesting.

“Oh, you brought my skates!” Viktor said, and reached for them. When Yuuri handed them over, he could see that they were indeed Viktor’s skates, not Yuuri’s after all. The left one was fine; the right one was splattered with blood, streaked over the gold blade and speckled up along the sides.

“Oh, they’re—“ he said, stupidly, and made to take them back, but suddenly they were even bloodier, soaking Viktor’s hands. Except it wasn’t the skates, the skates weren’t there anymore, it was the gash along Viktor’s stomach, nearly bisecting his abdomen, and the blood was from the entrails that Viktor was desperately trying to hold inside his own body.

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, and blood was coming out of his mouth as he spoke, “Yuuri, don’t let me die, please—“

Yuuri woke up to the heavy weight of dog on his chest. The slobber of the attempt to lick him awake mixed with the tears that were already streaming down his face, and he cried for a long while and even afterwards couldn’t fall back asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A phone call and a quick trip to the countryside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this one a little early since I won't be available to post at the "correct" time later.
> 
> This chapter owes more thanks to [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor), the first person to read this story and my hero, and [Rakel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar) the amazing beta-reader.

Phichit was the first to notice the dark circles under his eyes the next morning, and he wordlessly went and got a cup of coffee from the break room. “I know it’s trash, and that you like tea better,” Phichit said, “But you’re never going to survive the day without it.”

“I know,” Yuuri said, and tried to keep his disgusted faces to a minimum, because he really did appreciate it.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Christophe asked, the first time he got a good look at Yuuri.

“No,” Yuuri admitted. “But I need to work this case.”

Sara stopped by afterward, and he was sure that Christophe had brought it up with her. “Hey,” she said. “If you think your personal attachment is affecting your judgment…”

“It isn’t,” Yuuri said, firmly. He was sure it wasn’t. It was affecting everything else—his dreams, how he fidgeted, how often he let himself burn with hatred towards the photograph of the missing Unsub—but not the quality of his work. This was going to be the best profiling he had ever done, because he couldn’t afford anything less.

“Okay,” Sara said. “I’m here if you need to talk, okay?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said. “Thanks.”

He didn’t need to talk. He needed to figure out why the middle of nowhere in Louisiana, why Maine, what the poems meant, where Viktor Nikiforov was going to be in the next two days while he was still breathing and his heart was still beating and all his blood was still inside him and not dripping down his hands and face and—

“--Katsuki. Yuuri.” Celestino was standing in front of him. “Did you hear me?”

Yuuri startled, pushing his chair back to look up at him. “Lost in thought,” he said, after a second of getting his breath back. “I’m sorry.”

“Nekola and Yang have talked to everyone who works at the hotel, and his coach and some of the other skaters,” Celestino said. “They’re still going through the security footage to see if they can see anyone who might have seen something useful and not realized it, but it looks like the DNA was the most we could get out of Colorado.”

“The DNA is good,” Yuuri said. “If we had any idea where to look…” If the man had any sort of predictable range, it would be easy. For now, a BOLO out to the entire nation was the best they could do, but it was unlikely that anyone would be studying faces particularly hard when their Unsub could be anywhere.

“Giacometti and I are driving out to West Virginia to the man’s last known address,” Celestino said. “We’ll talk to people and see if there’s anywhere else we should be looking.”

“He grew up just north of here,” Yuuri said. “But his parents are dead and he had no siblings...he’ll be calling soon.”

“Have Chulanont take it,” Celestino said. His voice was firm. “We’ll be back this evening. Call us after he calls, let us know everything.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said. He stared at the man’s face, pinned to the board. It was forgettable, except for the fact that Yuuri was drilling it into his memory so he could scan security footage for him, pick through crowds. If they didn’t find Viktor in time, Yuuri realized, he would be looking for this man in every place he ever walked for the rest of his life.

Celestino rested a hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. “He’s smart,” he said. It took Yuuri a moment to realize that Celestino meant Viktor and not the Unsub, when he continued, “The Unsub left the skates, but even if he hadn’t, he really got that blood on everything. Lot of DNA.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said. “He’s smart.”

“We’ll find him.” He clapped Yuuri on the shoulder and walked away.

Yuuri returned to the files. The man had never been to Colorado before, as far as their records indicated. He’d taken Viktor from an elevator at a large event, similar to how he’d taken the baseball player from a hotel full of his team, snatched the triathlete from a hotel at a large competition.

“It’s not personal, is it,” he said, mostly to himself.

Phichit looked up. “You don’t think?”

“Who he takes,” Yuuri said. “It’s always from a big event--Skate America, there’s a ton of people. He could have picked any skater.”

“You don’t think he picked.”

“I’m saying there’s not a profile,” Yuuri said. “Victimology is that they’re a competitive athlete--they’re pros, but they’ve all been at different levels. Viktor, he’s the best figure skater in the world, but none of the others have been at the top of their field. It’s not about that.”

Phichit hummed agreement. “It’s about the profession. Or about professional sports,” he said. “You’re right. They’re emblematic, not personal.”

“He’s just a junkie from West Virginia,” Yuuri said. “Why is he doing this?”

“I don’t know,” Phichit said. They lapsed back into silence, Yuuri tracing through the man’s life, trying to figure it out. Who are you? Why are you doing this? Where are you taking him? How can I save him from you?

The sleeplessness of the night before was getting to him; as much as he tried to focus, he drifted in and out, struggling to concentrate on the files. Phichit seemed a little more alert, but wasn’t having any better luck from across the desk. The black words on the whiteboard stayed as they were. Yuuri picked up the file and flipped through the victim photos, settling on Viktor’s.

It was a familiar photo, a simple headshot, taken the previous year. He wore his white and red Russia jacket and a warm smile. Even through the hair that fell partially in his eyes, it looked like he was making eye contact right out of the photo.

Yuuri would give anything to have that look in real life right now.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Phichit asked, breaking through his thoughts.

“Not if you keep asking me that,” said Yuuri. It came out mean and he regretted it immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said, unable to keep his voice from cracking. “I didn’t mean to--” and then the tears were coming again. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he choked out. He tried to say something else, something along the lines of if we talk about it, I’m going to cry. But it seemed to be too late for that; all that came out was a hiccuping sob.

“Okay, it’s going to be okay,” Phichit said, and came around the desk. Yuuri sank to the floor next to his chair, and Phichit sat down next to him and hugged him. “It’s going to be okay.”

Yuuri gave up and cried into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Phichit said. “It’s been a bad month--and also, your first month, you were overdue for this. Even if it wasn’t--you know.”

“I’m distracting you,” Yuuri said, voice muffled in the fabric of his shirt.

“I wasn’t getting anywhere,” Phichit admitted. “Just staring at the phone and waiting.”

Yuuri sniffled. “I need to stop doing this to you.”

“Nah,” Phichit said. “It’s good. Like when you’d get really drunk in college and see a dog and start sobbing!”

Yuuri let out a watery laugh. “It was a really cute dog.”

“I bet,” Phichit said, patting his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got this.”

“We’ve got this,” Yuuri repeated. It was strange to be having this conversation--not because it was him and Phichit, because Phichit giving him pep talks while he cried had been a central part of his college experience, but because he felt twenty-one years old again, except that he was on the floor of an FBI office instead of a dorm room, feeling like his world was falling apart.

They picked themselves up off the floor, and Yuuri found himself in the bathroom washing his face with cold water for the second time in as many days. He gave himself three minutes to stare into the basin and panic, and then another three minutes to pull himself back together. Then he went back out to find Phichit.

Phichit looked up from his computer when Yuuri came back. “I think we could try--” he began. Yuuri never found out what Phichit was about to suggest, though, because the phone rang.

“Sara!” Phichit yelled.

“Triangulating as soon as you pick it up,” she called back.

He took a deep breath. Yuuri was relieved it wasn’t him; he wasn’t sure that he could keep calm with this man, not now. And they had to keep him talking. He had been careful so far, always managing to get off the phone before they could track him down, but all it would take was getting him to slip up once…

“This is the BAU,” Phichit said, clearly, into the phone. A pause. Yuuri picked up the headphones and hesitated only for a second before fitting them over his ears. He had to know.

“--happened to your fearless leader?”

“You’re talking to me today,” Phichit said. “I’m Agent Chulanont.”

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” The man’s voice was gravely, possibly deliberately--Yuuri had the sense that he deliberately lowered the pitch when he spoke, as though to disguise his voice. We know who you are now, Yuuri thought. You can’t hide anymore. The man continued, “You know how much time you have.”

“You know we don’t know that,” Phichit said. “For all we know, you’ve killed him already.”

Yuuri bit his lip, and Phichit gave him a faintly apologetic look. It was standard procedure, coaxing out a proof of life, but Yuuri didn’t want the reminder.

“No trust, is there--no, I understand.” Yuuri braced himself. He was still not prepared, when it came. “Go on, then.” A burst of undefined sound on the other end of the phone, like someone was exhaling into the receiver. Then the man again. “Well, tell them, do you live?”

“Do I?” It was Viktor’s voice, unmistakable even through the phone. There was something barbed in the soft inflection of those two words, but without an expression to go with it, Yuuri couldn’t quite read it. The man let out an annoyed hiss.

“Are you hurt?” Phichit asked, and then the man clicked his tongue, like someone scolding a naughty child.

“Oh, no, we’re done now. You have your proof of life--maybe next time, you’ll believe me. Either way, he’ll get his chance to talk after he’s had a chance to think about what he’s done.”

Phichit and Yuuri exchanged a glanced. “And what has he done?” Phichit asked, carefully.

“No more questions,” the man said. “Time’s up. We’ll talk soon.”

“Wait--” Phichit began, but the line was already dead.

Sara was shaking her head already before Yuuri spoke. “I’m sorry. He knows how close he can cut it, and--” she closed her fist in thin air, a sharply frustrated gesture.

“We knew we wouldn’t get a trace,” said Phichit. “He’s alive, and--pissy, it sounds like. Do I? What was that?”

Yuuri shook his head. “I don’t know. What did the Unsub mean, think about what he’s done?”

“We said it wasn’t personal,” Phichit said. “Do we think it was? Was everyone else a dress rehearsal for some sort of revenge on Viktor?”

Yuuri considered it. “His pattern hasn’t changed,” Yuuri said. “Normally we’d see--some sort of escalation, some extra passion, if he moved from a stand-in to an object of his fixation. And there was nothing personal in there, really. He didn’t even use his name.”

Phichit nodded. “So it’s--what? Something generic, that he’s guilty for? Do we assume that every victim’s been guilty of it?”

“Maybe,” Yuuri said. “He’s never used that phrase before, but he’s always talked to Celestino--I think this is good, actually. He was a little thrown to get someone different on the phone.” Viktor’s two sharp little words were ringing in his ears. It felt like he’d had a shot of adrenaline.

Phichit nodded. “It’s not gender, it’s not sexuality, it’s not the sport in particular, it’s not level of success in the sport beyond the fact that they’re playing it on a professional level…”

“Something against professional sports in the abstract?” Yuuri frowned. “I keep looping back to the drugs, but there weren’t allegations of use with any of the others, and I know Viktor doesn’t take anything.”

“Professional sports as a concept?” Phichit suggested. “God, that’s such an obscure reason to go on a murder spree.”

Yuuri had to agree. “He doesn’t read as an idealist, either,” Yuuri said. “No manifesto…”

“You’re right,” Phichit said. “If it was an ethics crusade, he’d be more up-front about it. It’s a personal hate, but on people who aren’t personally involved…”

“We should call Celestino,” Yuuri said. “Maybe they found something.”

Phichit nodded, already dialing. “Better if they know.”

Celestino picked up after two rings. “Did he call?”

“Sara’s forwarding you the audio,” Phichit said. “He said he wanted Nikiforov to think about what he’s done.”

Celestino made a surprised noise. “That’s interesting,” he said. “He didn’t say why?”

“Not specifically,” Yuuri chimed in. “We were hoping you might have found something.”

“We found an acquaintance of his who mentioned he might have been fixated on an old, bad breakup. Didn’t know the man’s name, though.”

“Does he live in town?” Phichit’s voice went up in pitch when he got hopeful.

“No. It was someone he knew before he went to prison.”

“He lived in Virginia before,” Yuuri said. “We could drive up.”

“Alright,” Celestino said, after a pause. “Sara, if we get any further contact, let us know, but I doubt it. He seems to be sticking to his pattern.”

“We’ll let you know,” Phichit said. “Thanks.”

“Ciao, ciao,” said Celestino, and hung up.

Phichit turned and looked at Yuuri. “Road trip!”

“Road trip,” Yuuri agreed. A bit of the adrenaline of the phone call still hummed through him--that, and the thought that maybe this was what they needed to do, to understand, to find Viktor.

After the first half-hour, that adrenaline was gone and the anxiety was creeping back in. Phichit drove while Yuuri looked, unfocused, out the windows. In early fall, the trees still held their leaves, but they were burnished golds and reds instead of green. A few days earlier, Yuuri had thought about how beautiful the turning seasons were: now, it looked like the creeping approach of death.

Phichit noticed his look and flicked on the radio. “Come on, we’re getting there! This could be it.”

“This could be it,” Yuuri agreed. Yuuri hoped it was, because in two days the phone would be ringing again, and a day after that it would all be over, and he couldn’t bear the thought of it.

The town turned out to be the sort that had seen better days. On the outskirts there was a strip mall, the stores shuttered except for a Stop-and-Shop, blinking on the far end of the parking lot. Phichit pulled the man’s photo from the folder and pulled the van into the parking lot. It was easy to find a space--there were only two other cars there.

“They can’t have more than one or two grocery stores,” Phichit said. “It’s a good start.”

There was an older woman picking through the packaged cheese in the back aisle, and a bored clerk playing on his phone. Yuuri went up to the counter. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m Agent Katsuki with the FBI.”

“Are you fucking serious?” the teen said.

In any other circumstance, it would have been funny. In this case, Yuuri just set his badge on the counter.

“Oh shit,” he said. “I didn’t do anything!”

Phichit was trying and failing not to laugh. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We just need to ask if you know this man. He might have lived here three or four years ago.” He showed him the photo.

“His name was--” Yuuri started to say, and then broke off.

Phichit looked at him, and then flipped open the folder to check. “Uh.”

The teen shook his head, looking at the photo. “No, I don’t recognize him--but man, I’ve only worked here like six months. What’d he do?”

They were spared answered by the only customer, who Yuuri realized he’d dubbed Packaged Cheese Woman in his head. “Excuse me, did I hear you say you were from the FBI?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said. “Do you know this man?”

The woman looked at the photograph. “He looks familiar,” she said. “He might have--yes, he looked a little different but I recognize him.”

“Did he have any family here?” Phichit asked. “Friends?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. You should ask at the church. The pastor knows everyone.”

“We’ll do that,” Yuuri said. “Thank you for your assistance.”

The teenager stared at them as they left. “The FBI,” Yuuri heard him mutter. “Wow.”

Phichit was snickering by the time they got to the van. “Teenagers.”

Yuuri couldn’t help but smile a little. He settled back into the passenger seat and picked up the folder again, flipping it open to scan the page. “Lowell.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t remember his name,” he admitted.

“Me neither,” Phichit said. “I keep thinking the Unsub.”

“I keep thinking that asshole,” Yuuri said.

Phichit snorted. “He is an asshole.”

“He is,” Yuuri said. “And we’re going to catch him and he’s going to go to prison forever.” He snapped the folder shut again.

Phichit nodded. “Then I guess we should find that church?”

It wasn’t hard. Driving straight in, the town unfolded itself on either side of the main road like a dusty abandoned pop-up book. The church was the biggest and most vibrant structure, and even it looked faded. Beside it stretched a decrepit elementary school and an old baseball diamond, the grass overgrowing the edges.

There was a bible study going on in the church--the pastor and three other women sitting on folding chairs at the front of the rectory. All four turned and stared as they walked in.

“Hi,” Phichit said. “We’re with the FBI!”

“We have a couple questions,” Yuuri added.

The pastor sat down with them and studied the photo. “Yes,” she said. “He lived here until maybe four years ago. Then he left town, and we heard he’d been arrested. He’d been on the drugs for a while before he left, though.”

“We’d heard he might have had a relationship?” Phichit said.

The pastor’s eyes widened. “Of course. Yes. Arthur Riordan. I don’t think he got involved in the drugs until they broke things off.”

“This might sound like an odd question,” Yuuri began. “But did Arthur play any sports?”

She looked at him. “...how did you know that?”

Yuuri felt that same stir that he’d felt when he heard Viktor over the phone: the sense that he was getting closer. “Lucky guess?”

“Could you tell us about that?” Phichit pressed.

She gestured out the window. “He played baseball. He was good. He played in college but couldn’t get a foothold, and then he moved back here. But there’s a team in Richmond--just an adult league, but I suppose someone saw him and he ended up joining a minor league team up near Baltimore.”

“Do you know where he is now?” Phichit asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Was this before he got together with--Lowell?” Yuuri’s brain supplied the Unsub before he could remember the man’s name.

“Oh, no,” the woman said. “They broke it off when he was scouted. He took it very badly.” She paused. “Arthur’s not in any danger, is he?”

“I hope not,” said Yuuri.

Yuuri drove the way back while Phichit made phone calls. It was getting to be evening again, and Yuuri had to turn on the headlights, the red-and-gold trees blurring into formlessness in the dusk.

Eventually Phichit set down the phone. “Sara’s going to start looking for him. I figure tomorrow we can call minor league baseball teams. There can’t be that many around Baltimore.”

Yuuri hummed agreement. “Do you think he’s in danger?”

“Maybe,” Phichit said. “If he’s the eventual target, it would make sense.”

“Is this a dress rehearsal for revenge on his ex?” Yuuri wondered. “Or is it pseudo-idealistic now? Does he think athletes deserve to be punished for--some reason?”

“I don’t know,” said Phichit. “Hey. Are you going to be okay tonight?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said.

“You could come home with me,” Phichit offered, quietly. “If you want.”

“I have to walk the dog,” Yuuri said. “Thanks, though.”

“Okay.” They sat in silence in the darkness for a long while, Yuuri staring at the pavement lit only by his headlights, Phichit alternating between watching Yuuri and looking at his phone. When the empty highway gave way to a crowded one and the world came alive with other cars and streetlights and buildings, Phichit said, “I’m here if you need me, okay? Anytime.”

“I know,” Yuuri said, quiet. “Thanks, Phichit.”

“That’s what best friends are for,” Phichit said. “Being there when your--well. When everything goes to shit.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri repeated, and meant it. 

When he drove home, he felt a little bit less hopeless, a little bit more like they were getting somewhere even as they were running out of time. Three days, three days, you only have three days hummed in his veins as he walked the dog and ate and got into bed, and he called up the memory of Viktor’s voice saying Do I? into the phone like his words were knives, and if he dreamed that night he remembered none of it in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr as [catalists](https://catalists.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments give me the will to live.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri visits Baltimore, has bad dreams, and takes a phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ongoing eternal thanks to [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor) and [Rakel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar), and everyone who has read and commented so far! It means a lot.

The rice cooker was the only appliance that Yuuri could operate on autopilot, and it was why he found himself eating plain white rice for breakfast. He hadn’t done dishes in forty-eight hours, and rather than add to the growing stack in the sink he opted to unplug the machine and sit on the counter with it in his lap, eating straight out of it.

That was how Phichit found him when he let himself into the apartment. “Wow.”

Yuuri flushed, even though Phichit had seen him do worse during finals. “Why are you here?”

“To make sure you were okay,” said Phichit.

“I’m okay,” said Yuuri. They stared at each other. Yuuri shoveled more rice into his mouth.

“You’re stress-eating,” said Phichit, unnecessarily. Yuuri made a noise through the rice that came out unintelligible but still effectively communicated no shit.

There was the click of nails on the tile and Phichit dropped down to the floor to bury his face in poodle fur. “Who’s a good girl? You are, you’re a good girl.”

“You are a good girl,” Yuuri said seriously after he swallowed the rice. She came over and pressed her wet nose to the bottom of his foot. He jerked it up. “Makka, no.”

“How’s she doing?” Phichit asked.

“Good,” Yuuri said. “She’s a dog, she doesn’t know I’m a mess.”

“She’s a smart dog!” Phichit said. “Aren’t you a good, smart girl?”

Yuuri had another mouthful of rice by then, and he had to chew and swallow before he could ask, “Why are you here?”

“I talked to Isabella this morning,” he said. “Isabella, you know, in Colorado, interviewing everyone at Skate America and everyone who knows Viktor.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said.

“She texted you.”

“A lot of people have texted me,” Yuuri said weakly. It wasn’t precisely a lie.

“Yeah,” Phichit said. “They’re still there, just in case, but…”

Yuuri set the rice cooker on the counter and hopped down onto the floor. He got a wet dog nose again, this time at his ankle, and he gave in and scratched her head. “Has Sara found him?”

“Viktor?”

“No, the guy.”

“Arthur Riordan?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said.

“No,” Phichit said. “It’s weird. We found like, a driver’s license, but it’s from Virginia. We couldn’t find an address. And we haven’t heard back from the minor league club, so. But it’s still early in the day.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said. “We need to find him. If we know why he’s doing this--maybe we find out where he’s taking them. Or why.”

“I’ll give you a ride,” said Phichit. “You ready to go?”

“Almost,” said Yuuri. He picked up his blazer off the back of the kitchen chair and slung it over his arm, and then picked his chopsticks back up off the counter and shoved another clump of rice into his mouth. “Okay,” he said, slightly muffled as he chewed. “Now I’m ready.”

Phichit just sighed and led the way out to his car.

The morning went by at a crawl. Yuuri spent most of it alternating between scanning old newspaper archives for any mention of Lowell or Riordan until his eyes couldn’t take it any more and then pacing the office as though another loop around the bullpen would bring a flash of inspiration. Phichit kept getting the voicemail of minor league baseball team owners, and eventually started trying to social media stalk their Unsub’s ex.

Around noon, Celestino expelled them from the office to force them to eat lunch. They ended up at a McDonalds because it was nearby and they’d lost all self-respect sometime between victims three and four. Phichit kept compulsively checking his phone. Yuuri, who had selectively muted most of his notifications two days before, shut out the rest of the world by methodically working his way through two cheeseburgers. Christophe started plugging kidnap locations and body dump sites into Google maps one after the other until the whole thing resembled a bizarre, frantically murderous road trip.

“If you tilt your head to the side and squint, it looks a little bit like a goat,” Christophe said.

“Theory,” said Phichit. “The Unsub wants revenge on all professional sports players because his ex-boyfriend was a professional sports player and somehow gave him a goat fetish.”

Christophe let out a mirthless laugh. Yuuri shoved an entire handful of fries in his mouth.

Back at the office, Sara was waiting to meet them. “I finally got a call back from the minor league team,” she said. “They said Arthur Riordan is going by Arthur Kasik now, which is why we couldn’t find him. He lives in Baltimore.”

“Hour and a half drive,” Phichit said.

“I’ll go,” Yuuri volunteered immediately.

Celestino nodded. “Phichit, go with him. Chris, let’s keep working on the geographic profile. Maybe Riordan can give us something that will make it a little clearer.”

Yuuri drove the van to Baltimore, mostly because he needed something to do with his hands besides pick at the dead skin around his cuticles and fiddle with his ring. He’d caught himself twice almost biting his nails, a habit he’d broken years ago.

Phichit Facebook-stalked Arthur Kasik while texting Sara, and together they quickly figured out where the last name came from. “He’s got a new partner,” Phichit announced. “Theodore Kasik. They must not be married, though. Sara couldn’t find a marriage license or anything, and he didn’t even legally change his name. Theodore Kasik has an apartment in Baltimore.”

“Weird,” Yuuri said. “Why not, do you think?”

Phichit shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never met someone I liked enough to want to marry, so I don’t know why they wouldn’t. What about you?”

Yuuri shook his head. “I can’t think of a reason.”

Arthur met them at a diner in Hampden. It was done in an over-the-top sixties style that Yuuri couldn’t muster the energy to fully hate. Phichit ordered them all coffee; Yuuri stirred in three packets of sugar to make it palatable.

“Do you know this man?” Phichit started off, laying the photo of Lowell on the table.

“That’s Brian,” Arthur said. “He’s my ex. We don’t date anymore, and I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“You’re a professional baseball player, right?” Yuuri said.

“Yes,” Arthur said. “I mean, minor leagues.”

Yuuri nodded. “Did you and Brian part on bad terms?”

Arthur grimaced. “Yeah, it wasn’t great. He was super upset that I wanted to move to Baltimore--we used to live down in Virginia. We got into this big fight. I said he was holding me back and he said I thought my career was more important than our relationship and--well, I guess he was right, because here I am. But that’s over now. I’m seeing someone else and it’s serious.”

“Theodore Kasik,” Phichit said.

Arthur looked a little surprised. “Yes.”

“You’ve been going by his last name,” Phichit said. “But you’re not married?”

“We’re engaged,” Arthur said. “But--I got some weird letters, a while back, when I still had my own place. And since I was moving in with Theo anyway, we thought it might stop if I used a different last name. I guess it worked since I stopped getting that mail.”

Yuuri leaned forward. “When was this? The last time you got the mail.”

“Maybe sixth months ago,” Arthur said.

“Do you have any of it?”

“No,” Arthur said. “We threw it out. Is there a problem? What does this have to do with Brian?”

“Do you know if Brian might have any means to travel extensively? An inheritance, maybe?”

Arthur shook his head. “He never had much money, and that was before he got into the drugs. What is this about? Do you think Brian sent me the letters or something? I never reported it so how did you even know to ask?”

Phichit and Yuuri exchanged a glance. “How much do you watch the news?”

“I watch,” Arthur said.

“The media are calling him the Killer B,” Phichit said flatly.

The blood drained from Arthur’s face. “No. Brian--no.”

“Yes,” Yuuri said, flatly.

“He wouldn’t,” Arthur said. “I knew him, he was--I mean he had his issues but not like…”

Yuuri reached back into the folder and lay out the photos of the body drop sites. The billboard in Louisiana. The docks in Florida. That horrifying tree in Maine. Arthur looked sick.

“Do any of these places look familiar to you?” Yuuri asked. “Any idea why he might have brought them here?”

Arthur shook his head. “No, I.” He stopped.

“What is it?” Phichit pushed.

“He got into this--urban exploring, stuff.” He poked the photo of the docks. “Where is this? Is this Florida?”

“Where have you seen it before?” Phichit asked.

“He went on these photography trips. He called it ‘urban exploration’ or something. Go into old or abandoned places and take pictures. There were some old warehouses in Miami that he went and took pictures of, and it looked like this.”

“Old warehouses,” Yuuri said. “Do you remember all the places he went?”

Arthur shook his head. “No, I--no. God, it was so long ago.”

“What about the letters you received?” Phichit said. “Can you write down everything you remember about them?”

Arthur nodded. “I’ll do anything that you think will help.”

“What about poetry?” Yuuri said. “Did he have any in particular he liked? Was it tied to any specific place?”

Arthur stared at him. “...he liked poetry. He made this book of all his favorites, printed it up himself, and gave it to me.”

“Do you have it?” Yuuri leaned forward.

“No,” Arthur said. “I threw it at him when we broke up.”

“Was that the only copy?” Yuuri asked.

“As far as I know,” Arthur said. “Why?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Phichit said. “Thank you. Anything you can remember about the letters you received, or anything he said to you about locations he went to, that would be helpful to us.”

“Tell me,” Arthur said. “About the poetry.”

Yuuri was surprised to hear himself speaking. “He makes them read it,” he said. “The victims, over the phone. He makes them read pieces of it.”

Arthur shook his head. “I can’t believe--jesus.” He shoved the cup of coffee away and buried his head in his hands.

“Please keep this quiet,” Phichit said.

“Of course.”

They sat and drank coffee in silence while Arthur wrote down everything he could remember of the letters. Yuuri’s had gone cold over the course of the interview, and the sugar had settled at the bottom. Yuuri wanted to eat it, but it wasn’t appropriate; then he remembered that he had lost all sense of shame, and so he picked up a spoon and scraped the sugar off the bottom. Arthur didn’t notice, though Phichit shot him a look.

“Okay,” Arthur finally said, and handed the notebook back over. “That’s all I remember, sorry.”

Yuuri handed him his card. “If you remember anything else, anything at all, call. Even if it’s the middle of the night.”

Arthur took it, and took the one Phichit held out as well. “I can’t believe…” he said again, trailing off.

“Give me your number,” Yuuri said. “So we can contact you if we have further questions.”

Arthur handed over his information willingly. Phichit picked up the receipt and went and paid the waitress while Yuuri finished licking the sugar off the spoon. Arthur just stared at his hands.

Phichit drove on the way back. Yuuri read through the notebook, skimming the half-remembered letters. “They just read like. Vague threats,” Yuuri said. Then he paused. “Think about what you’ve done.”

“At least we know we’ve got the right guy,” Phichit said. “But god. There’s so many abandoned places.”

It was evening again by the time they arrived back at Quantico. Yuuri handed the notebook over to Celestino and went to talk to Sara.

“Maybe there’s a list,” he suggested. “Online, of places for urban exploring. If those warehouses are on it, maybe the other locations he went to are, too.”

“I’ll run a search,” she said. “Good thinking, Yuuri.”

It didn’t feel like good thinking. It felt like a day and a half had crept by since the first phone call, and sometime tomorrow that final countdown would begin, and Yuuri would sit and stare at Christophe’s twisted convoluted map, at vaguely threatening letters, at websites for urban exploring, and while he did it and found nothing Viktor would be alone and dying and knowing that Yuuri hadn’t come for him.

That night the nightmares came back. This time, Viktor stood on the docks in Florida, blood dripping down from the slice across his throat, somehow smiling at him even as the red soaked through the tan of his coat, turning the fabric dark.

“Viktor,” Yuuri said, stumbling to him, pressing his hands to the wound, curling his fingers around Viktor’s throat like a necklace, like a promise. “Viktor, I’m so sorry, I’m so--”

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, still smiling. His teeth were stained with blood. “My Yuuri.”

“I’m coming,” Yuuri said. “I’m coming to find you, I am, I promise,” and Viktor kept smiling at him and the blood kept soaking through Yuuri’s fingers, wet and hot and as it soaked the floor Viktor’s skin got colder, colder, and his face got paler and Yuuri watched his eyes go dull and empty as he bled out in Yuuri’s arms.

Yuuri woke up sobbing, clutching at nothing. It was just past three AM. He cried for what felt like a decade, but the bedside clock reassured him was only ten minutes, and then he got up and went into the kitchen and ate a chocolate chip toaster waffle straight out of the box, still frozen.

Then he fell back asleep on the kitchen floor and was woken by his alarm clock gradually growing in volume from the other room.

The morning at the office seemed to pass by in a daze. Sara had found a mention of the warehouses by the docks on a blogging site, a few photos on an old photography website, but none of the other locations mentioned matched up with where they’d found bodies. She pulled lists of “good places for urban exploration” and “abandoned place photography,” but there were hundreds and hundreds.

Yuuri kept looking at the phone, imagining that Arthur might remember something else, call and tell them that wait, yes, he knew exactly where Viktor was. It was an idle, hopeless daydream.

It felt so wrong to have made it so far in the case--to have found this man and his motive and some explanation of what this was, where it had come from, so much more than they’d known even two days ago--and still not have the right answer. And all of it because Viktor had the presence of mind to spill the Unsub’s blood in the elevator.

You gave us everything we needed to find out who this man was. Please let it be enough to save you.

For the first few hours, Yuuri kept staring at the clock. Then he got caught up reading and rereading the poetry fragments and the letter, the transcripts of old phone calls, trying to see if there was a pattern, a connection, and then--

The phone rang.

The bullpen was on their feet in an instant. Celestino came from his office door, Sara from hers, Christophe and Phichit leaping up from their desks.

“Let me,” Yuuri said, voice shaking, as he looked at the phone. “I know Russian, I can--”

Celestino nodded. “Pick it up.”

Yuuri picked up the phone and lifted it to his ear. The call was being recorded, playing into Sara’s headphones already, the whole time listening in, but in that instant it felt very personal.

“This is the BAU,” Yuuri said, as clear and careful as he could manage. He could see in his peripheral Sara and Phichit moving, presumably trying to triangulate the call. “Can you hear me?”

“Hello,” Viktor’s voice was clear over the line, except for the fact that it was shaking. “I can hear you.”

“Hi, Viktor,” Yuuri said. He paused for a fraction of a second. “I’m Agent Katsuki Yuuri with the BAU. Can I call you Viktor?”

There was a brief pause. A trembling inhalation. Then, Viktor’s voice, a little steadier, almost teasing. “Only if I can call you Yuuri.”

“You can call me Yuuri,” he said.

“Hi, Yuuri,” Viktor said. “I have—four minutes and thirteen seconds left, I have to read something to you and then I can—can say goodbye to people, h-he said.” Viktor’s voice was shaking again. “I think it’s a poem.”

“Go ahead and read it,” Yuuri said.

“In dreams,” Viktor said, “The body triumphs, of finds itself naked in the streets in pain.” His accent thickened when he read like that, hesitating over unfamiliar and unplanned words. “It loses its teeth, shivers from love, breaks its earth open like a watermelon and is done.”

There was a sense of finality to those words, and Yuuri sucked in a small breath. Then Viktor laughed, a little laugh, tinged with hysteria. “Oh, god.” The way Viktor’s voice broke shattered Yuuri’s heart and strengthened his resolve all at once.

“Take a deep breath,” Yuuri said. “Is there anything else you’re allowed to tell me? That you want to tell me?”

He heard Viktor inhale, hold, exhale. Four, seven, eight. Trying to calm himself, Yuuri was sure. Yuuri matched their breaths together, and for a moment they were perfectly in sync. “Plenty,” Viktor said finally, “But I’ve been somewhat reliably informed that I’ll be beaten to death right now if I try anything, so I think I’ll stick to my goodbyes.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said, his heart thumping in his chest. Beaten to death. Another thing to add to his nightmares. He wanted to see Viktor, see that he was okay, press his fingers to the skin of his throat and reassure himself that it was whole. “I’m listening.”

“My skates,” Viktor said. “They’re important to me, did you—“

“Yes,” Yuuri said. “We’ve found them. Don’t worry.”

“Good,” Viktor said. “I want my husband to have them. I think he would want them. And please make sure he knows I love him.”

“I’ll make sure,” Yuuri said, slightly choked. “But I think he already knows.”

“And will you please say I’m sorry? To my coach, Yakov. And my teammate Yura.”

“I’m sure you don’t have anything to apologize for,” Yuuri said. “But I’ll tell them.”

“And it’s silly,” Viktor said. His voice over the phone had gone soft and careful. “But can I ask you to do something for me?”

“Anything,” Yuuri said, breathless. Christophe, hovering at his shoulder, gave him a look.

“I was in the middle of a book,” Viktor said. “And I’d like to know how it ends.”

“Why does it matter?” Yuuri asked.

“I don’t know, I guess it’s just for—what’s the phrase? State of mind?”

“Peace of mind,” Yuuri said.

“I thought it was state,” Viktor said, distractedly.

“What’s the book?” Yuuri asked, nudging him back on track.

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Viktor said.

“I’ve read that one,” Yuuri said. His heartbeat thudded in his ears. “What did you want to know about it?”

“The ending,” Viktor said. “Is it happy?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said. He could barely hear himself speak over the blood roaring in his ears. “It’s—yes. Everything turns out alright in the end.”

“I’m really glad to hear that,” Viktor said. “Thank you, Yuuri.” His name sounded like music when Viktor said it, the way he drew out the vowels. “I have to go now. Goodbye, Yuuri.”

“Goodbye,” Yuuri said. He heard the line go dead and Phichit cursed.

“He’s good,” he said. “I’m sorry, Yuuri, I don’t know where—“

“I do,” Yuuri said. “Or, I know, at least—he’s in Georgia.”

“Georgia?” Celestino asked.

“Midnight in the Garden—it’s set in Savannah, Georgia. And what he said before—“

“State of mind,” Phichit said. “His English is better than that, isn’t it.”

“They’re in Georgia,” Yuuri said.

“Okay,” Celestino said. “Where in Georgia?”

“I don’t—the book is set in Savannah,” Yuuri said. “But he specified state, so…”

“So don’t count on it being Savannah,” Celestino said. “I’ll call Emil and Isabella. We’ll meet them in Atlanta.”

“You think it’ll be a big city?”

“I think we can fly into a big city,” said Celestino. “And worry about the rest afterwards. I’m putting out a BOLO for the state of Georgia.”

“Nice job,” Sara said, as he went to grab his bag. She would remain behind with her computer setup, so now she hovered in the doorway between the bullpen and her office, watching them. “With the phone call. You kept him really calm.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri said. His nerves felt like a live wire. “It felt like. I don’t know, our last chance to find something out.”

“Yuuri,” Phichit said. “Call Arthur.”

“What?”

“Call Arthur. He may not remember every place Brian went, but if you give him a state--”

“Yes,” Yuuri said. “Okay. Yes.” He fumbled for his cell phone. His heartbeat felt like a countdown. Twenty-four hours and a whole state--no. Only a state. Viktor had given them this, given them so much, given him so much. He shoved away the image of Viktor bleeding out against him, of Viktor begging Yuuri to save him and thought instead of Viktor holding his skate like a weapon, Viktor hissing “Do I?” into the phone, Viktor sitting there all alone with the threat of death beside him and telling Yuuri what he needed to anyway.

If he was capable of that, then Yuuri was capable of this, of finding Viktor and bringing him home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Viktor reads from is "The Body Is the Victory and the Defeat of Dreams" by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke. You can read it [here](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/body-victory-and-defeat-dreams). The title of the fic is also from this poem.
> 
> Leave a comment to earn my love and devotion.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr as [catalists](https://catalists.tumblr.com).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is running out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who has commented or messaged me or left kudos. I've been kind of overwhelmed by the response.
> 
> Further thanks, as always, to the wonderful [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor) and [Rakel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar), who helped make this happen.

Yuuri dialed Arthur’s number into his cell phone while he shoved papers into folders. His bag was packed and ready under his desk, where he’d left it the morning after returning from their last ill-fated excursion to Maine. This would be different, he promised himself, and he was so busy focusing on that thought that he almost didn’t realize when Arthur picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Kasik,” Yuuri said, “This is Agent Katsuki from the BAU. We spoke yesterday?”

“Oh, yeah,” Arthur said. “Hi. Hello. Agent.” He sounded startled. “What did you need?”

“Do you remember any places that Mr. Lowell might have gone in Georgia?” he asked.

Arthur made a noise into the phone. There was a moment of silence. Yuuri wondered if the man could hear his heart pounding across the phone line. But then he said, “I’m sorry, no.”

“Try to think back,” Yuuri said. “Anything could help.” His voice sounded calm, which was wrong, because he was screaming inside.

But Arthur was already demurring. “I really don’t--he went a lot of places, and I wasn’t that. I mean, maybe I wasn’t a great boyfriend, but. I really don’t know.”

Yuuri could feel the frustration rising. “Do you have any way to check? Old emails, photos, maybe he had a flash drive…”

“I can check when I get home tonight, maybe,” Arthur said.

That was when Yuuri snapped.

“Mr. Kasik,” he said. “I don’t know how we failed to impress this upon you yesterday, but your ex-boyfriend has murdered five people and he will make it six within a day if we cannot stop him. So if you believe you have this information you need to get it to us as soon as possible or an innocent man will die because of it!”

His voice cracked on the last sentence. Celestino and Christophe, thankfully, had already left, but Sara and Phichit and most of the rest of the bullpen were staring at him. He took off his glasses and set them on the desk so he couldn’t see the judgment in their eyes.

“...I think there might be something on an old hard drive,” Arthur said. He sounded shaken. “I’ll go look and call you back?”

“Thank you,” Yuuri said. His brief anger had faded and he just felt guilty, for yelling at an innocent witness, and frightened, for Vitya, waiting for him somewhere in Georgia with twenty-four hours to live. “This number is good.”

“Okay,” Arthur said.

“Bye,” Yuuri said. He barely heard the end of Arthur’s own goodbye before he ended the call.

“Yuuri…” Phichit said.

“Don’t,” said Yuuri. He put his glasses back on, picked up his files and his bag, and bolted for the plane.

Once he got into his seat, he huddled against the window. Phichit sat next to him, and said something to Celestino that Yuuri didn’t catch. Celestino patted him on the shoulder and went to sit down. Phichit was polite enough to not say anything as the plane took off and Yuuri let himself zone out as they passed over North Carolina.

When he glanced back over sometime after Charleston vanished behind them, Phichit had gone to sleep. Yuuri realized that he looked exhausted; the week couldn’t have been easy for him, considering the case and the added burden of looking after Yuuri. He resolved to make dinner for Phichit or buy him another hamster or something to make up for it.

Celestino came over. “We’re coming down over Atlanta,” he said. “Landing in about ten minutes.”

Yuuri nodded, and Celestino headed back to his seat. He was about to wake Phichit when his cell phone vibrated on the tray table.

“Katsuki,” he answered.

“Ahh, Agent,” it was Arthur. He sounded a little on-edge, a little excited. “I went home and, I had this old flash drive of his and I found some photos he took of this place. It’s titled “Atlanta Prison Farm” if that means anything to you?”

Yuuri shoved Phichit in the shoulder to wake him up. Phichit blinked at him, so Yuuri pointed at the phone to his ear and mouthed, “Call Sara.”

“Can you send us those photos?” Yuuri said. “I’ll text you an email address.”

“I--yes,” Arthur said. “Is this--does this help?”

“I hope so,” Yuuri said. “Thank you.”

He was watching Phichit call Sarah when Arthur said, “Ah. Agent Katsuki?”

“Yes?”

“Is this my fault?”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “I beg your pardon?”

“If he’s killing athletes--if he’s making them read those poems he gave me, this is because of me, isn’t it?”

“No,” Yuuri said. Now he really did feel guilty for losing his temper at Arthur earlier. It was the sort of thing, he thought, that would have bothered Viktor, who always thought Yuuri ought to be nicer to people. It wasn’t usually intentional, of course, but he’d never been great at navigating the emotions of other people. “No, of course it’s not. It’s clear Mr. Lowell has suffered some sort of psychotic break, and you may have happened to be the object of his fixation, but you’re not the cause of it. That’s completely on him.”

“Oh,” Arthur said, and exhaled. “That’s--good to hear. You’re sure it’s not because of me?”

“Certain,” Yuuri said.

“Thank you,” Arthur said.

“I’ve got to go,” Yuuri said. “I’ll text you the address to send the photos.”

“Of course,” Arthur said. “Bye.”

Yuuri hung up and immediately texted Arthur Sara’s email. Phichit put Sara on speaker.

“Yuuri, what is it?” she asked.

“Atlanta Prison Farm,” Yuuri said. “What do we have?”

There was a moment’s pause. “It’s an abandoned prison outside the city. The roof caught fire a while back and I guess it wasn’t worth it to repair. But it’s a no-trespassing zone, though I guess people go there to explore sometimes. It’s actually in another county, which is part of why it’s never been rebuilt.”

Celestino and Christophe were looking at them, listening from across the aisle. The plane was descending, or Yuuri was sure that they’d also be standing around the phone.

“I’m having the ex-boyfriend send you the photos he has,” Yuuri said. “If he held someone at one of the places he photographed in Florida…”

“Yes,” Sara said. “That sounds likely.”

“I’ll contact the police,” Celestino said. “We’ll meet them out there.”

Yuuri’s nerves were humming from the moment they ended the call with Sara, through the plane touching down, through getting into an SUV with Christophe and Celestino and Phichit and feeling his gun at his belt. After a year with the FBI prior to joining the BAU, he was almost used to it, but today it felt weighted in a way it normally didn’t.

“Isabella and Emil aren’t landing for another hour,” said Phichit.

“One perpetrator,” Celestino said, “And no evidence he has a gun. We don’t need to wait for backup.”

Let us be right, Yuuri prayed silently as they wound their way out of town, through the grasslands, past billboards and little businesses. Let him be okay.

It was lucky that they didn’t need backup, because even with the phone call to the police, only a county sheriff was there to greet them. “They’re getting a team together,” he said, “But there’s some gang shit downtown…”

Celestino waved him off. “One Unsub,” he said. “This team can handle it. Do we have an ambulance coming?”

“ETA in five,” he said. “You expecting trouble?”

“I don’t know,” said Celestino.

“They usually in bad shape?” the man asked.

“They’re usually dead,” said Christophe, effectively ending the conversation.

They approached the building on foot. It was tall and concrete; it had once been white, but was now stained brownish with dirt and tattooed with graffiti wrapped in vines. It looked like a place where nothing lived, and Yuuri suppressed a shiver.

“Giacometti, Katsuki,” Celestino said. “You’ll take the back. Chulanont and I will take the front. We’ll go on my mark.”

Celestino and Phichit crept to the front entrance while Christophe and Yuuri went around the back. Yuuri adjusted his earpiece and his vest, clutched the gun in one hand and his flashlight in the other. At the back, there was a door with peeling paint. Christophe put a hand on the handle, but it didn’t turn, so he lined up to kick it. The front entrance had no door at all, and Yuuri knew Celestino and Phichit would be standing at either side of it, waiting.

Celestino counted down in his ear. “Three, two, one, now.”

Christophe kicked the door in. It was a testament to the age of the building that it gave immediately, swinging open with a squeal of long-suffering hinges. Christophe went first, gun raised in front of him, flashlight aimed ahead. Yuuri switched his own on as he stepped into the dimly lit space. The room was dusty, empty, and Yuuri and Christophe switched between checking the shadows and double-checking the floor was stable before they stepped.

“Clear,” he reported.

“Clear,” Phichit said over the coms.

“Clear,” said Chris.

The progressed into the hallway. It was just as empty, and in the middle of it they met Celestino and Phichit, coming in from the front. There were old cells, the doors standing open, lining either side. Celestino motioned Chris and Yuuri to the right; he and Phichit went left, shining the light into each opening and calling each one as they cleared it.

Then, as Yuuri pushed open the last door, he heard Celestino bark, “Don’t move!” and he almost froze and turned back, except that there was a figure hunched on the floor of the cell, backlit by the streaks of sunlight glinting through the chinks in the wall. Yuuri turned his flashlight on him and saw, unmistakably, Viktor.

Viktor was on his knees, his legs folded under him, bound wrist to ankle. It looked painful. The ropes binding his arms back were all that kept him upright; he was slumped as far forward as he could manage without pulling his arms from his sockets. Yuuri imagined he’d been left like this on and off since the abduction, and his heart clenched. As he tilted the beam onto his face, he could see that Viktor was gagged and blindfolded. Pain was etched across his features, written in the furrow between his brows and the tense line of his jaw.

Yuuri shoved the door the rest of the way open, and Viktor flinched away at the sound, nearly losing his balance.

“He’s here,” Yuuri said into the com. Christophe was already at his shoulder, having cleared the last cell on the other side, and it was that which allowed Yuuri to holster his own weapon and drop to his knees at Viktor’s side.

“Hey,” he said. Viktor twisted as much as he could in the ropes, caught in some mixture of hope and unsteadiness. Yuuri was afraid of hurting Viktor if he moved as Yuuri tried to remove the blindfold, so he reached around and took hold of his bound wrists and rested his fingers on the pulse point, as gently as he could.

Viktor stilled. Yuuri drew his fingers down along Viktor’s right hand and found the gold band on his ring finger. “I’ve got you,” he told Viktor, and ran his thumb over the ring, his touch feather-light. Viktor relaxed, and Yuuri reached up and undid the blindfold.

Viktor’s eyes were red-rimmed and looked all the more blue for it, and the obvious life in them was the most beautiful thing Yuuri had ever seen. He held his hand against Viktor’s cheek, remembering how his skin felt against Yuuri’s.

“Hi, sunshine,” he said quietly. “Hold still for me another second, okay?”

Viktor nodded. Yuuri went for the gag next. It took him a moment, but he tugged the knot in the fabric free and gently pulled the cloth from Viktor’s mouth. Inches from him, the ragged edge to Viktor’s breathing was obvious. Yuuri went to undo the ropes from his wrists and ankles, but Viktor cleared his throat, a pained rasping noise, and so he waited.

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, only just audible, and then the edge of his mouth pulled into a smile. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”

Yuuri wasn’t sure what his face looked like from the rush of surprise and affectionate disbelief that Viktor, approaching four days in the hands of a psychopath and still wincing from the way his limbs were contorted, was teasing him. I can’t believe I married you, he thought, and then, I can’t believe I almost lost you.

His laugh, when it came, was belated and halfway to a sob. He covered it by saying what he’d meant to before. “Let me get your wrists undone, okay?”

Viktor nodded. Yuuri moved behind him to look at the knots; they were tight, and Yuuri wasn’t sure he could undo them with his fingers. “I’m going to use a knife, okay?”

He almost moved around to the front of Viktor to show him the utility knife from his belt, but Viktor said, “I trust you,” before he could stand. So Yuuri unsheathed it and sawed through the topmost ropes, then slid his fingers between the lowest ones and Viktor’s wrist so he could cut them without breaking the skin. When he finally pulled the bonds away, there were deep red welts in Viktor’s pale skin, and the fibers were stained with dried blood.

It would heal, Yuuri knew, but his blood still boiled at the sight of them.

With his wrists separated from his ankles, Viktor toppled forward, and only a combination of Yuuri and Christophe kept him upright. Yuuri hadn’t noticed Christophe holstering his gun and coming into the cell, but he was now sitting on the ground as well, a hand on Viktor’s shoulder.

“I’m Agent Christophe Giacometti,” he said with a wink. “How are you feeling?”

“Great,” Viktor said blithely. With Chris steadying Viktor, Yuuri knelt to cut the rope binding his ankles and carefully worked the rope off his legs. Those, at least, had been tied over the fabric of his pants, leaving red indents on the skin below but no abrasions. Then Viktor continued, “I have no sensation in my feet and my knees are--experiencing some pain.”

Yuuri flinched at that and slid his fingers down below the cuff of Viktor’s sock, pressed into the side of his foot. Viktor tried to pull away. “Ow!”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I wanted to--I think you’ve lost some circulation but it will be okay. Let’s see if we can get you up.”

That proved an impossibility, but they did get Viktor’s legs out from under him. He stretched them out in front, working his fingers down them from knee to ankle, biting back a flinch every time he flexed an ankle.

“How are we on paramedics?” Yuuri said.

“Scene is clear,” Celestino said. “We’ve got the Unsub in custody, paramedics coming in now.”

“Someone’s coming in to take a look at you,” Yuuri told Viktor. “Hey.” He cupped a hand under Viktor’s chin, lifting it to look at him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m glad Rostelecom’s not for another month,” Viktor said obliquely, and then added, “I did lose consciousness in the elevator, but I don’t think I have a concussion.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said. Viktor lifted his gaze from his legs to Yuuri, and there was something jagged and desperate in his eyes as he reached out towards him.

The scene was clear and the paramedics were coming; Yuuri lost his last vestiges of professionalism and pulled Viktor into a hug. “Okay, Vitya, you’re okay.” As if Yuuri’s arms around him suddenly gave him permission, Viktor let out a choked sob and buried his face in Yuuri’s neck. Yuuri started to tear up as well, everything finally hitting him as he felt Viktor shudder against him.

“I’ve got you,” Yuuri said, choking up. “Breathe, Vitya, I’ve got you.”

They stayed that way until the paramedics entered, led by Phichit and trailed by Celestino. Yuuri released Viktor so that the EMT could get close, but Viktor was reluctant to let go. He stopped crying the moment Yuuri pulled away, wiping his face with a hand.

“You need to let her look at you,” Yuuri said softly. “I’ll be right here. Let me go do my job, okay?” He pressed a kiss to Viktor’s temple and then to Viktor’s ring as he drew further away, after which Viktor finally consented to detaching himself and talking to the paramedic, who immediately began checking his eyes with a penlight.

Yuuri went to stand by Phichit and was quickly joined by Christophe.

“What the fuck?” Chris asked.

Yuuri sighed. “You’ve now met my husband, Viktor.”

“I didn’t even know you were married,” Chris said, flatly. “Let alone to a world-famous figure skater. Your ring is on the wrong hand. You told me it was a good luck charm.”

“It is a good luck charm,” Yuuri said, and flushed. “It’s just...also a wedding ring. And they’re worn on the right hand in Russia.”

“Did you know this?” he demanded of Phichit.

“I was the best man at his wedding,” Phichit scoffed. “Of course I knew.”

“Did Celestino?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said. “He--yes. And Sara must know now, since she pulled Viktor’s files. And Emil and Isabella talked to Yakov, so they must know by now but--” Yuuri sighed and buried his face in his hands.

“When did you get married? How did you even meet?” Christophe wanted to know.

“Last spring,” Yuuri said, “And--it’s a long story.”

“Not that long,” said Phichit, something dangerous about his smile.

“Please don’t,” Yuuri said.

“It’s only fair, since he was the only one left in the dark,” Phichit said. “What you should know about Yuuri is that he was a Russian minor in college, he spent a semester abroad in St. Petersburg, and if you leave him unsupervised, he’s a blackout drunk.”

Yuuri flushed and decided he needed to concede the battle to prevent Phichit from winning the war. “I wasn’t lying about--that is. I was a fan of his,” Yuuri said. “Which was why I took Russian, actually--stupid reason, but...anyway, I still don’t actually remember the first time I met Viktor. But um, apparently he thought it was memorable, because he somehow tracked me down after a literature class and--” Yuuri sighed. “Anyway.”

He was briefly spared the continuing interrogation by the paramedic coming to them. “We want to take him to a hospital for a more thorough examination,” she said, “And to get him on an IV. He’s a little dehydrated and suffering from severe exhaustion. No concussion and he probably doesn’t need stitches, but they’ll get his wounds cleaned and bandaged.”

Celestino nodded. “We’ll be by the hospital in an hour or so to conduct an interview.”

Viktor protested when they tried to get him on a stretcher; it was a combination of his sheer stubbornness and the instability of the old prison floor that made the paramedic concede. Yuuri helped him to his feet. He was still unsteady, but with an arm around Yuuri’s shoulder he could manage the walk down the hall and through the front door.

“Hi, Phichit,” Viktor greeted.

“Hi, Viktor,” Phichit said. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too,” Viktor said, and smiled. “And nice to meet you, Christophe and--you must be Celestino?”

“That’s right,” Celestino answered.

“I wish it was under better circumstances,” Viktor said with the carelessness that Yuuri associated with Viktor having emotions he didn’t want to talk about. He reached up and squeezed his hand.

They reached the ambulance and Viktor sat without prompting and let them put an IV in his arm. He didn’t react at all when they inserted the needle, just tipped his head back and closed his eyes. In the sunlight, he looked utterly drained of color, the circles under his eyes so dark they looked like bruises.

Yuuri was reaching out before he realized it, brushing a thumb along Viktor’s forehead, smoothing out the wrinkle between his eyebrow, touching the scattering of freckles along his cheekbone. Viktor kept his eyes closed, but leaned in, pressing his cheek against Yuuri’s palm.

“We need to go,” the paramedic said after a moment, not unkindly. “There’s not really room in the back, but you can meet us at the hospital.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Yuuri promised, and this time it was Viktor who caught Yuuri’s hand and kissed his ring before he allowed them to pull him away.

“Chulanont and I will bring the Unsub to the station,” Celestino said once Yuuri had emerged from the ambulance, “And interrogate him there. Katsuki, Giacometti, go to the hospital. Giacometti, you’ll get a statement from Viktor. Yuuri, you’re off the case.”

“What,” Yuuri said flatly.

“You shouldn’t have been on it in the first place,” Celestino said. “I trusted your judgment that you could handle it, and you were right. But I’m taking you off it.”

“I handled it,” Yuuri said. “You said I--”

“Katsuki,” Celestino said firmly, and Yuuri fell silent. “I’m doing you a favor. They’re not going to keep him overnight unless something else comes up. Take him home, take a few days. You’ll do him more good there.”

Yuuri nodded after a moment. Phichit gave him a quick little hug before he followed Celestino. Yuuri got in the car with Chris, who immediately resumed questioning him as they drove.

“I thought he trained in Russia,” Chris said.

“He does, it’s--” Yuuri sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me,” said Chris.

“I was in my third year of college when we got together,” Yuuri said, “And I spent the spring in Russia and the whole summer, also. And then when I first went back to the states, we thought I was going to move back after I graduated.”

“But you didn’t,” Chris said.

“No,” Yuuri said. “I thought I was going to do analytics for a firm in St. Petersburg, but, I was accepted into the FBI. We had just gotten engaged.” Once he started talking, he couldn’t make himself stop, like a dam breaking. “And we, ano--he had all these ideas about, spending part of the off-season in Virginia with me, and coming to visit, and I didn’t want to hold him back so I--” Tried to break it off and made him cry. “But we worked it out, eventually. The first year, it was hard but, we got married in April, right after Worlds. He was here most of the summer. And since he got Skate America and Rostelecom--for, I don’t know if you know anything about skating, it doesn’t matter. But he left Makkachin--his dog, or our dog, I guess, with me, and he was going to come back for a little while after Skate America but--” Yuuri realized tears were streaming down his face again and he gave up and just sobbed, folding his arms and burying his head in them on the dashboard.

He realized they’d pulled into the parking lot at the hospital when he felt Christophe’s arms around his shoulders, hugging him. “Alright,” he said. “He’s fine, you saved him.”

Yuuri sniffled and wiped his eyes. “I want to go see him.”

He knew he still looked like he’d been crying, so he wasn’t sure if it was that or the badges or the wedding ring, but no one put up any fuss about taking him to Viktor. He looked slightly better, his wrists bandaged, a little less pale. His eyes were shut, but he opened them when he heard them enter.

“Hey,” Yuuri said.

“Yuuri,” Viktor said, and smiled at him. It was the wide smile Yuuri only found directed at him, and it made the exhaustion seem to fade entirely from his features. “Come here,” he said, and then looked at Chris. “Unless you can’t.”

Yuuri abruptly resolved to thank Celestino for his excellent foresight. “I can do whatever you want,” he said, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off his shoes so he could curl up next to Viktor. “I’m off the case.”

Viktor looked concerned. “Is that--”

“It’s a good thing,” Yuuri said. “I get to be your husband and nothing else.” He rested his head on Viktor’s chest, letting his steady heartbeat sound in his ear.

“I have some questions,” Christophe said, “But they can wait if you need.”

Yuuri shifted to look at Viktor. His expression had become resigned, the way it looked a split second before he was approached by a fan when he really didn’t have the energy, but was about to smile and be polite and gracious anyway. “It’s fine,” he said.

“It’s not,” Yuuri said. “Can you--go eat dinner, Chris, and come back in an hour?”

“I can do it now,” Viktor said, stubbornly.

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri said. “Okay? Take a nap.”

“I’ll bring you back a sandwich,” Chris told Yuuri, and left.

“I might dream I’m back there,” Viktor said softly. “If I go to sleep now.”

“You won’t be,” Yuuri said. “And I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Viktor let out a little sigh. Yuuri thought for a second he would argue, but instead he closed his eyes. His breathing evened out quickly, and Yuuri closed his own eyes but didn’t sleep, just lay against him and listened to his heartbeat like it was music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Atlanta Prison Farm](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/atlanta-prison-farm) is a real place, in case you'd like a visual.
> 
> Just one more chapter--more of an epilogue--to go. If you can, please leave kudos or a comment--they mean a lot!
> 
> And/or, hit me up on Tumblr as [catalists](https://catalists.tumblr.com).


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri and Viktor come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A final thank you to the ever-wonderful [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor) for reading this chapter.
> 
> And thank you to everyone who has left kudos or commented or bookmarked--it means a lot, truly.

**Twelve Hours Later**

The taxi back from the airport was only half an hour, but it felt like the longest car ride of Yuuri’s life. It was just past three in the morning when the driver turned onto their street. Yuuri had dozed off on the plane and hadn’t quite woken up properly again; Viktor had done nothing but sleep on Yuuri’s shoulder for the entire journey.

Looking at Viktor, his hair and clothes rumpled, pale with exhaustion, Yuuri was grateful he’d barely woken for the journey from plane to taxi. The driver had asked, once, if he was alright. Yuuri had responded, “My husband has been ill,” in a tone that implied the line of inquiry was rude. He was grateful the man had dropped it, but felt a stirring of guilt when he thought too hard about it. It had come from a place of concern.

Yuuri had a lot of apologies to make for the last few days, he realized. His anxiety had always made him shove people away, and the fear he’d been living with had overwhelmed every other emotion and impulse. Now that the sense of desperation was gone, the guilt had started to settle in.

“Dollar for your thoughts?” Viktor asked, softly. Yuuri startled. He hadn’t even realized he’d woken up.

“It’s penny,” Yuuri said. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“We’ve talked about you underselling yourself,” Viktor scolded. “Your thoughts are worth more than a penny.”

“You just couldn’t remember what the one-cent ones were called,” Yuuri teased.

“My husband has so little faith in me,” Viktor mourned.

“Where are you from?” the driver asked.

“Russia,” Viktor said. “Everything is a ruble there! Much simpler.”

Yuuri’s cell phone buzzed. He almost regretted turning his notifications back on; everyone in his life had left him a litany of voicemails and text messages over the past few days. He’d only managed a few texts to his parents and Mari, telling them Viktor was safe and they’d call from home. He’d made one phone call, from Viktor’s hospital room, to Yakov. It was difficult to tell over the phone, but he suspected the man had cried.

Not in possession of his cell phone, Viktor had quietly left the matter of contacting everyone to Yuuri. He’d spoken to Yakov when Yuuri called, a litany of Russian so fast that even Yuuri had difficulty keeping up.

This text was from Phichit.  _ Let me know when you’re home! _

Yuuri texted back.  _ Almost there.  _ Then he sent another, remembering the guilt, remembering Phichit standing in his apartment watching him eat rice out of an appliance.  _ Thank you. _

The taxi pulled up in front of the house. Yuuri found his wallet and paid the driver, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and helped Viktor out. Viktor was unsteady on his feet; although the hospital had cleared him after he’d given a statement and they’d opted to fly home immediately rather than stay overnight, it was clear that he hadn’t fully recovered.

The apartment was on the third floor; Yuuri steered Viktor towards the elevator, but he stopped moving abruptly, becoming a dead weight on Yuuri. “Sorry,” he said. “Can we take the stairs?”

The security footage came back to Yuuri in a sudden flash, and he gasped. “Oh, no, I mean, yes, I’m sorry.”

Viktor shook his head. “I didn’t think of it until I was in front of it.”

At the stairs, Yuuri hesitated. Viktor gripped the bannister and set his jaw.

“Wait,” Yuuri said, and touched his arm.

“I don’t want to use the elevator,” Viktor said. “I can…”

“I know,” Yuuri said. “Trust me?”

“Of course,” Viktor said immediately. Yuuri took his hand from the bannister and wrapped Viktor’s arm around his shoulders. He caught on and held on with the other one, and Yuuri slid one arm under Viktor’s back and another under his legs and lifted him in a bridal carry.

“Are you sure?” Viktor asked.

“I’m not a professional athlete, but I’m not in bad shape,” Yuuri said, although he hadn’t been sure until he’d done it. But Viktor was surprisingly light, considering his height.

“I never implied otherwise,  _ solnyshko _ ,” Viktor said. Yuuri started to climb the stairs; after the first landing, Viktor buried his face in Yuuri’s neck. “I want to sleep for a year.”

“Not until you eat something,” Yuuri said. “You hardly weigh anything.”

Viktor had been fed over the past few days, but obviously not enough; the hospital had put him on a nutrient drip as well as saline, and carrying him now Yuuri could feel the definition of his spine. “I may have lost a few pounds.”

Yuuri quietly did the math. At the height of the competitive season, Viktor didn’t really have weight to spare. There wasn’t anything to be done about it immediately, except: “You can go to sleep after I make you dinner.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“We’ll sleep in.”

“Do we even have any groceries?”

That was a great question; Yuuri hadn’t gone shopping that week. “We’ll find out.”

They did have groceries, Yuuri discovered when he opened the door, because Yakov was in the living room, waiting for them.

“Yakov!” Viktor’s delighted greeting overlapped with Yuuri’s confusion. Makkachin attempted to launch herself at them both, which would have been disastrous if Yakov hadn’t caught her and convinced her to sit. She ended up nosing at Yuuri’s legs instead, a blessing since it meant not dropping Vitya.

“How did you—“ Yuuri started to say. “I thought you were in Colorado.” He still had his arms full of Viktor.

“Until you called. Yes.”

Yuuri set Viktor down on the couch, but he immediately stood up to fling himself at his coach. Yakov caught him and held him for a long moment. “Idiot boy,” he said. “Do not scare me like that again.” He sounded a little choked, but his eyes seemed clear.

Viktor, on the other hand, cried immediately. “I’m sorry,” he laughed wetly. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know. I brought your things,” Yakov said, and finally let him go. “Your bag and skates are here. Your medal is on the counter with your keys.”

That at least explained how he’d gotten into the apartment. “And here.” He handed Viktor his phone. “Your neighbor said she walked the dog.”

“Remind me to thank her,” Yuuri said to Viktor.

“I should charge it,” Viktor said when he tapped the button and found that it was dead. He ran a hand through his hair and winced. “And shower.”

Makkachin refused to be ignored any longer and began barking; Viktor immediately dropped to the floor and hugged her, murmuring in Russian.

“And eat,” Yuuri reminded. “I’m sure we have…”

“In the fridge,” Yakov said.

“Thank you,” Yuuri said, surprised. Then he hugged Yakov, too.

Yakov awkwardly hugged back until Yuuri let go. “I assume you will be here a few days.”

“If that’s…alright,” Viktor said. “I know we’d said I’d stay for a few after the competition but it’s already been—“

Yakov cut him off with a wave of his hand. “More important you heal.” They were still speaking English. His accent was heavier than Viktor’s and Yuuri sometimes suspected that they’d communicate better in Russian, but Yakov had never gotten used to using the language with Yuuri. “Are you staying in the Grand Prix?”

“Yes,” Viktor said, immediately.

Yuuri bit his lip, but said nothing.

“Then we will stay here for now,” Yakov said. “There is rink nearby, yes?”

“Yes,” Viktor said. “What about Yura?” It came out a little muffled, since he’d buried his face in Makkachin’s fur.

“He is still a junior and he is fine,” Yakov said. “I know what I’m doing, Vitya.”

“ _ Spasibo,  _ Yakov,” Viktor said.

“Call Yura tomorrow,” Yakov said. “He is very worried though he will not say it.”

“I will,” Viktor said. “Yakov. Really. Thank you.”

He gave Viktor another perfunctory hug before he left. Yuuri latched the door and turned back to Viktor. “Shower first?”

“Yes,” Viktor said. “Please.”

The bathroom was one of Yuuri’s favorite things about the apartment, and part of the reason they’d chosen it. The bathtub was large, and separate from the shower, which had a stone bench and sandstone tile. Yuuri carefully stripped off Viktor’s clothes while he ran the water, opting for the shower over the bath because they were both truly dirty: Viktor with the sweat and dirt of several days and his own dried blood, and both of them with the dust and residue of the abandoned prison. Then he took off his own while Viktor settled on the bench of the shower, tipping his head back under the warm water.

Yuuri washed Viktor’s hair first, massaging the shampoo through it and feeling the strands turn smooth under his fingers as he rinsed it through with hot water. Viktor took the bottle from him and went to wash Yuuri’s, but he pulled back a little.

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri said.

“I want to,” Viktor said. “Please let me?”

Yuuri liked the sensation of Viktor’s hands in his hair too much to protest after that; it was soothing to have their hands on each other, skin on skin after so long apart. Both of them were too tired for the movements to turn sexual, but Viktor’s hands lingered on his hips, his ankles, while Yuuri clung too long at Viktor’s shoulders, carefully peeling the bandages at his wrists back to gently rinse the wounds.

They stayed under the water longer than was strictly necessary. When they’d both run out of even vaguely legitimate excuses to touch each other, Viktor gave in entirely and pulled Yuuri onto his lap. Yuuri leaned in and they sat there until the water started to cool, and Yuuri reached over and turned it off.

Even without the warmth, it was an effort for Yuuri to pull away and retrieve their towels from the floor. They dried off, and Viktor sat on the edge of the bathtub to bandage his wrists again. While he did so, Yuuri ducked into the bedroom to change into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and came back with Viktor’s clothes.

Yuuri’s jacket and pants were set aside to be dry-cleaned; the rest, Yuuri dumped into the washing machine together and turned on. The apartment was a bit of a mess, he realized; Viktor had always been the better housekeeper, but the stress of the previous week had made Yuuri give up any pretensions at all.

Viktor seemed too tired to worry about it. Once dressed, he’d settled on the bed next to Makkachin, eyes drifting shut.

“Eat first,” Yuuri said. Yakov had left plenty of stroganoff, and Yuuri piled it into bowls and reheated it and brought it to the bedroom. He had to rouse Viktor again, but he woke up enough to eat on his own and then wander back into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Afterwards, they settled into bed together. Yuuri had felt when he’d first found Viktor, when he’d first cut the ropes away and seen his eyes and heard his voice, that all the fear he’d been holding onto had drained away. But in bed together, pulling Viktor against his chest, Makkachin warm and soft on Viktor’s other side, there was an additional sense of relief.  _ You’re safe,  _ Yuuri thought,  _ you’re here and you’re safe and I’ve got you _ , and at five o’clock in the morning with the sun beginning to rise outside, they fell asleep together.

**Three Days Later**

When Yuuri woke up, the sun was already streaming perpendicular through the blinds, well above the horizon. He felt a momentary stab of panic before he remembered that he wasn’t expected to be anywhere. It couldn’t have been too late--Makkachin was still sprawled next to him--but the other side of the bed was empty.

“Vitya?” he called into the quiet of the apartment.

“In the living room,” Viktor called back.

Yuuri roused himself slowly, sitting up. Makkachin whuffed at him and he stroked her ears to apologize for disturbing her. Then he slid out of bed and walked into the living room, where Viktor was on the floor, stretching.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Viktor said, sliding the rest of the way into a split. “No damage done.”

That wasn’t quite true, Yuuri knew, although at the nearby rink with Yakov yesterday Viktor had proved that his skating, at least, hadn’t suffered from the ordeal. The media had immortalized the bandages at his wrists (“Almost healed,” Viktor had chirped to a reporter) but only Yuuri saw the line of tension in his shoulders, the way he curled in on himself when no one was looking.

Yuuri sat on the floor and hugged him from behind; Viktor let out a little surprised noise but immediately acceded to it, tipping his head back onto Yuuri’s shoulder.

“You know,” Yuuri said quietly, “You don’t have to be doing this already.”

“Stretching actually reduces pain,” Viktor said, but Yuuri shook his head.

“Going back to the rink,” he said. “Competing.”

“Yakov stayed here for me,” Viktor said. “It would be rude if I didn’t practice with him--even in a public rink.”

“He would have stayed even if you’d said you were dropping out of the Grand Prix,” Yuuri said. “...you could, you know.”

“I couldn’t,” said Viktor. “I’m not hurt, after all.”

Yuuri slid his hand down Viktor’s arm from shoulder to wrist, touching the bandages. “You are.”

“Not really,” Viktor said. “It could have been much worse.”

“You could have died,” Yuuri said, and then it came out in a rush. “I could have lost you, I almost lost you, and I don’t want to stop you from skating but you’re  _ hurting  _ and you could stay here with me. If you want.”

“I always want,” Viktor murmured. “But I can’t stay here as long as I’d like.”

“How long do you want to stay?” Yuuri asked.

“Forever,” Viktor answered, and tipped his head to kiss Yuuri on the corner of the mouth.

“Then stay forever,” Yuuri said. “Let me take care of you.”

“Oh, Yuuri,” Viktor finally sat up and pulled his knees up to his chest. “You already do that.”

“You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to,” Yuuri said.

“I only have so many years of skating left in me,” Viktor said quietly. “And it feels like--it isn’t that I don’t want to stay with you, darling. But I would never have considered it if I hadn’t been--that is..”

“If you hadn’t been kidnapped,” Yuuri said carefully. Viktor nodded. The words still seemed hard for him to form, himself, but he looked untroubled when Yuuri said them.

“Yes. So it seems...ah, I’m not sure of the word in English. Imprudent? To let him do more damage now.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said. He resettled himself in a more comfortable position and began to massage Viktor’s shoulders. “I can see that.”

“Besides,” Viktor looked over his shoulder at Yuuri to show he was smiling. “I want a fifth consecutive Grand Prix gold. And I want to do my free skate again.”

“I never got to tell you,” Yuuri said. “It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful skating I’ve ever seen.”

“You say that every time,” Viktor teased.

“I mean it every time!” Yuuri said.

“It’s about you, you know,” Viktor said. “And how terribly I miss you every time we’re apart.”

“I miss you too,” Yuuri said. “I wish you were here all the time.”

“I wish I was too,” said Viktor. “In a few more years, I think. I would like...one more Olympics, maybe. The winter of 2018. Two and a half more seasons, and I will retire and then I will be with you always.”

“You don’t have to decide now,” Yuuri said. “What would you do here?”

“Choreography,” Viktor said. “Coaching, maybe, though I don’t know if I’d be any good at it. Little Yura wants to enter seniors next year and Yakov wants me to help him.”

“He’s cute,” Yuuri said.

“Like an angry little kitten, yes,” Viktor said. “...this scared him very badly, I think.”

“It scared me, too,” Yuuri admitted. “I dreamed…” He cut himself off.

“What did you dream?” Viktor asked.

“I don’t--I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Yuuri said.

“ _ Solnyshko, _ ” Viktor said reproachfully. “What did you dream?”

“That we were back on the beach in Hasetsu,” Yuuri said. “And we were talking and then you were bleeding and I--I couldn’t stop it.”

His hands had stilled on Viktor’s shoulders; it still came as a surprise when Viktor slid out from under them and stood, then turned around to take both of Yuuri’s hands and pull him up.

“Where?” Viktor asked.

“What?”

“Where was I bleeding?”

“Viktor, no--”

“Where? Tell me.” He still had both of Yuuri’s hands in his.

“Your--your stomach. Like…” The other victim, he didn’t say.

Viktor drew both of Yuuri’s hands under his shirt and pressed them flat against his stomach. Yuuri could feel the warmth of his body, the muscles under the unbroken skin.

“Where else?” Viktor asked, when Yuuri had stood there a moment, unable to draw his hands away.

“Your--” For some reason this was harder. “Your throat.”

“Ah,” and Viktor took hold of his arms again and this time brought Yuuri’s hands to his neck. Yuuri cupped his hands around it, reaching his fingers around the sides and holding them there, like a bandage, like a shield. He could feel Viktor’s adam’s apple move under his thumb when he swallowed, and when Viktor spoke the words vibrated under his hands. “I’m just fine.”

“I know,” Yuuri said, and it felt more real than the other times he’d said it, holding Viktor like this.

“Thanks to you,” Viktor said. “You saved me.”

“The team did,” Yuuri corrected. “And I couldn’t--if you hadn’t cut him like that, if you hadn’t said that over the phone, I don’t know how we would’ve--” he cut himself off. “You were so  _ brave _ ,” Yuuri said. “And I was so scared the whole time but I was so proud to have married you.”

“I was scared I would never see you again,” Viktor said. “That--I had this thought, that maybe you’d be looking, from what you had said about the case and what I’d seen on television. But I was afraid right up until you picked up that phone.”

“Oh,” Yuuri breathed. He finally drew his hands away, but Viktor caught them again and brought them to his chest, and even through the fabric of his t-shirt Yuuri could feel his heart beating.

“And then when I heard you,” Viktor said, “I knew it would be alright.”

“I didn’t,” Yuuri said. “You couldn’t have--”

“I thought, here is my greatest wish fulfilled, that whatever happens, I have gotten to speak to my Yuuri again,” Viktor said. His heartbeat was steady right up until Yuuri sucked in a breath, and then it stuttered a little as Yuuri’s eyes welled up.

“When you--that first phone call, when he made you talk to prove you were--” Yuuri choked out, the tears already spilling over. “I heard you, and I thought--I’ll find him, I can’t not find him.”

Viktor wrapped his arms around Yuuri and pulled him to his chest. Yuuri couldn’t bring himself to move his hands away from Viktor’s heart, so he stood there and let Viktor hold him while he felt it beat under his hands.

“You found me,” Viktor said. They were close enough that Yuuri couldn’t see his face, just feel him, his chin against Yuuri’s shoulder.

They stood like that for a long time, breathing together like they had for that one moment over the phone only three days ago, an entire lifetime ago. Finally Yuuri pulled back and wiped at his face, which had gone blotchy again with tears. When Viktor released him, Yuuri realized he’d also been crying, but silently, and as he also wiped the tears away there was almost no trace left.

“It’s not fair,” Yuuri huffed. “That you can cry and still look beautiful. I look like a mess.”

Viktor kissed him. “But you’re my mess.”

“You need to shower,” Yuuri said. “Did you go running?”

“Not far,” Viktor said. “I thought it might help.”

“Do they still hurt?” Yuuri asked, concerned. They’d been reassured at the hospital that there was no damage to Viktor’s legs that a little rest wouldn’t cure, and he’d been fine at the rink yesterday.

“Not help that,” Viktor said. “Help…” he waved a hand at nothing, but Yuuri understood perfectly what he meant. “Virginia is very beautiful in October. I didn’t get to see this, last year.”

“It is,” Yuuri said. “I’m glad you got to see it.”

“I’m glad I got to see you,” Viktor said.

“If we don’t have a case,” Yuuri said, “I’m going to come to Sochi and see you skate.”

“Assuming I make it to the finals, I would like that very much,” Viktor said.

“You will,” Yuuri said.

“So certain.”

“I just know,” Yuuri said.

Viktor hummed. “Yuuri.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said, decisively.

“If you’re not,” Yuuri said, “You have to tell me.”

“I would tell you,” Viktor said. “But I will be okay.”

“Are you sure?” Yuuri asked.

“Mmhm.” A mischievous look stole over his face. “I just know.”

“Vitya,” Yuuri sighed, half amused, half exasperated, loving him utterly.

“I have you,” Viktor said. “How could I not be?”

Yuuri looked at him for a moment, without the words to reply. Then he leaned forward and took Viktor’s chin in his hand and kissed him, and kissed him, and let it say everything.

**.end**

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are.
> 
> If you like my writing, I have two other Yuri!!! on Ice fics up right now, a little Harry Potter AU one-shot, [all magic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14316102) and a post-canon fic about found families and trauma called [and by morning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14368380).
> 
> If you like me, I can be found on Tumblr as [catalists](https://catalists.tumblr.com). Please come yell about Yuri!!! on Ice with me!
> 
> And, if you have a lot of free time this summer and want to write or draw with some wonderful people (and me also), I'm captain of the Viktuuri team over at Sports Fest 2018. [Check the event out here.](https://sportsfestival.tumblr.com/post/173852979663/attention-all-sports-anime-fans-sign-ups-for) We're particularly looking for artists but more writers are welcome as well!
> 
> Finally, if you liked the story and could leave kudos or a comment, it would mean the world. Thanks!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr as [catalists](https://catalists.tumblr.com).
> 
> Comments give me the will to live.


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